Free Will Astrology

ARIES (March 21-April 19): How much more can you hold? How much further are you willing to reach? How much bigger of a big picture can you open your mind to see? We will soon discover the answers to those questions, as well as several others that have to do with the themes of unbinding, emancipation and the loss of inhibition. Judging from my reading of the astrological omens, I'd say the prospects are high for you to achieve a record-breaking state of relaxed and curious expansiveness.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Explore the off-limits area of your imagination, Taurus. I'm talking about that barely conscious part of your psyche where taboo fantasies and unruly notions have been steadily growing in the dark, accumulating the dark luminosity that all secret things do. If you consort with them now, you'll be just in time to prevent them from becoming monstrous and reeling out of control. Even better, you'll have a good chance of shaping them into resources that will serve you well.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): I recommend that you read one of those ground-level books on intimacy skills, like Relationships for Dummies or The Complete Idiot's Guide to Romance. It's not that you are any dumber about these matters than the rest of us; it's just that this is a favorable time for you to work harder than usual on boosting your Love IQ. Remedial efforts taken now will generate assistance and inspiration from unexpected sources. For best results, I suggest you consider keeping a journal about the lessons you'll be asked to master. Entitle it something like "How I'm Becoming as Smart About Love as I Am About Everything Else in My Life."

CANCER (June 21-July 22): During the heyday of samurai culture, the Japanese word tsuji-giri meant "to try out a new sword on a passer-by." After analyzing your astrological omens, Cancerian, I'm appealing to you not to commit the metaphorical equivalent of that in the coming week. Here's what I mean: You've got good reasons to use the metaphorical equivalent of a new sword, and you will wreak some constructive havoc if you direct your warrior attitude at the right targets. But if, on the other hand, you carelessly slice and dice passers-by and other innocents who don't deserve it, you'll waste that valuable resource and won't correct the problems that have piqued your sense of injustice.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): "When love is not madness, it is not love," said Spanish dramatist Pedro Calderon de la Barca. But according to my analysis of the astrological omens, you will dramatically disprove that notion in the coming weeks, Leo. In fact, I'm betting that love will make you stark, raving sane. It will calm you down, heal a wound or two, improve your eyesight, help you understand yourself better, improve your digestion, and stimulate you to become more tolerant and forgiving towards the entire world.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): First let me make it clear that I'm not predicting you will face difficult events in the coming days. Not at all. Second, I'm not saying you will have to endure more pain than usual. Third, I believe your suffering will be about average - similar to what normal people bear in normal times. Having said all that, though, I encourage you to be aggressively exploratory toward the pain you feel. Have long talks with your murky fears. Gaze bravely into the parts of your life that make you sad. Why? Because it's a favorable time to search for treasure that's buried in the shadows - to enhance your psychological health by dealing with what's not so healthy. Recall Carl Jung's wise words: "The foundation of all mental illness is an unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering."

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Some years ago, in an advertisement designed to attract Spanish-speaking flyers, U.S.-based Braniff Airlines bragged about its leather seats with the phrase "viajar en cuero." But that phrase actually means "to travel stark naked," not "to travel on leather." The marketing department goofed. One of your main goals in the coming week, Libra, should be to prevent comparable outbreaks of the "lost in translation" syndrome. In fact, I urge you to act as an interpreter in situations where different worlds overlap. Be sure, for example, that extroverts and introverts understand each other. Facilitate the communication between cynics and optimists, morning people and night owls, caffeine addicts and pot heads, dreamers and realists. Be especially alert for misunderstandings that may arise during interactions between the right and left sides of your own brain.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Are you ready for your next big initiation? Probably not, but that's OK. Your upgrade to the next level should go fine, even if you wobble and sputter for a while before and after. Just to let you know, there may be no single striking event to dramatize it for you. It could arrive almost secretly in a roller coaster dream, or announce itself with a warm rush of unfamiliar emotion while you're in the middle of lunch. But however it insinuates its way into your awareness, Scorpio, it will open you to the possibility of seeing things that have been invisible to you before now.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): "I need a strategy for bringing constructive change into my life on an ongoing basis," a Sagittarian reader named Ursula wrote to me. "I want to figure out how to arrange for a never-ending series of gentle wake-up calls. When that happens, I will have mastered the sinewy magic of being permanently unstuck. I will have made it a habit to be highly alert and wildly responsive in the most relaxed ways possible. The world will look completely different to me then; reality itself will have mutated. I won't cling to little scraps of hope that make me feel secure, but will instead be on the prowl for fresh challenges that constantly expand my love for life." Ursula's longing is a brilliant articulation of what I think all of you Sagittarians should quest for in the coming weeks.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): I think it's a good idea for you to give up mediocre pleasures that drain your energy and diminish your intelligence. I also wish you would sacrifice irrelevant fantasies and deluded hopes that lead you away from your riveting dreams. On the other hand, I will rejoice if you commit yourself twice as intensely to the robust pleasures that refine your energy and boost your intelligence. And I will love it if you take three practical actions to supercharge one of your riveting dreams.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): What if I told you there will be 13 militantly helpful angels in gossamer armor standing guard around your bed every night, fighting off nightmares and ensuring that your dreams are blessed with floods of sublimely practical revelations? Would you regard what I said as a poetic metaphor, as the hyperbolic fantasy of a kooky astrology writer? Or is there a chance you'd take me literally? That you'd consider my vision to be the prophetic truth about an actual event? If it's the latter, then I urge you to be aggressive about asking the angels for the very best mojo they can muster. This is one time when you have license to be greedy about tapping into the primal power of supernatural goodness.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): This would be a good week for you to tell people's fortunes at parties and help the police solve crimes with your clairvoyant abilities and read the minds of those you love in order to communicate with them better. What? You say you don't have any psychic powers? That's a dirty lie! You most certainly do. It may be true that your culture has brainwashed you into denying and suppressing them. But I assure you that they are lying there half-dormant, just waiting for you to believe in them and use them for everyone's benefit. And this is an ideal time, astrologically speaking, for you to do just that.

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